Will the lights stay on this winter?

So until you were 27, what if you are 77, 87?

Tony

Not much chance of power cuts next winter. Look at the way energy prices are rising! People are already cutting back.

Dave

I have a nice diesel generator on standby, a tank of heating oil & several tons of coal and wood. I've been watching the insanity coming for a while, replacing reliable power with intermittent power is mind-blowing.

I will be stocking up on coal tomorrow. Also dig out the camping stove and lamp from the garage. At least I will be able to keep warm and see to cook food.

Edited By Anthony Knights on 28/07/2022 20:30:36

Fingers crossed for a mild winter, if global warming really is correct. As stated above, who was the bright spark who decided to abandon reliable power generation for a sun that buggers off to the Antipodes for our coldest half of the year, leaving us dependant upon a few puffs of wind? Not one of the ex-Bullingdon club members?

Back in the day of the 3 day week (miners strike, I think?) sitting at desk with a candle, hand writing notes to enable me to quickly dictate letters when the juice came back on. Smoked like a chimney, gave me husky voice which made my Dictaphone tapes much sought after by the typing pool girls. 30 years stopped smoking and large offices all swept away by internet/emails/texts. But some things don't change, like brainless politicians.

I'm alright Jack ! 20KVA alternator, 1905 Peugeot diesel and all the cooking oil I can burn ! Then there's the wood burner ! Always been a bit self reliant, now it's paying off ! Noel.

You just live in a sleeping bag, like the junkies do it

Outrage now at the profit the power companies are making, British gas now paying dividends to shareholders again. EDF in France making a loss though but no doubt profit in the UK.

Importing Electric from Belgium at exhorbitant prices. A news story saying we export gas to Europe? Predictions of £ 2 to 3 thousand a year for power now.

Ahhh. The sweet smell of privatisation success

Funny how no one bothered while it was only the poor who were getting gouged

Back in the dark (literally)days of the miners strike our night shift supervisor took the opportunity to curb the noise emanating from our meal break card games by switching off the lighting in a bid to stop the National Grid collapsing (or somefink) our machine shop was some 200 yards long by 100 yards wide, just how much noise can 6 men who have drawn the short straw that week generate? anyway one of our number drew on the technology of times long gone by & made an oil lamp from a small bottle of paraffin with a wick which was secured in the middle of the table by double sided tape & surrounded by 3 larger bottles of water giving out a quite astonishing amount of white light, this allowed our card games to continue & we saluted the ladies of long ago who used this method to enable their evening embroidery sessions.

BobH

We consumers are being ripped off in a huge way, why has the cost of electricity and gas had to rise in this country to the levels it has and in so doing generated obscene profits for the energy companies, their excuse of market forces will not wash. There is a so called independent watchdog who is supposed to be overseeing the situation in respect of customers, but we are being fleeced by the energy companies, things have got to change, we the consumers have got to have a bigger say and a much stronger voice if this pantomime called “free enterprise” is to continue. The privatisation of energy supply was supposed to give the customers choice but we have ended up with a regulator, that’s Offgem, setting a retail price that generates the obscene profits for energy companies and leaves the customers now in dire financial circumstances. Now could be the right time for energy to come back under government control to stabilise the situation and bring the prices down to acceptable levels. Re Nationalising energy supply would rationalise the process and stabilise prices by removing the step in the process where our energy suppliers buy their “product” from a supplier then generate prices to sell on to us the consumer that give their shareholders the vast profits that we are seeing now. I am hoping that the moderators will not class this as political because it is looking at a commercial issue and a way in which it could be controlled. Dave W

Centrica made less than 10% profit. That's not exactly fleecing.

Maybe if we had invested in storage capacity, we would be less vulnerable to fluctuations in world markets, but then we'd have the cost of that infrastructure.

As to the brief price spike on importing for a few hours from Belgium, that's how the market works. We import and export electricity according to need and pricing, but you can't legislate against turbines tripping etc.

We have to be careful that talk of re- nationalising energy supply is not ideologically motivated but evidence based. I seem to recall that when nationalised from about 1948 to 1990 it lacked proper investment and was plagued with high operating costs.

This may be of interest showing live electric generation (excuse the pun).

https://electricinsights.co.uk

It’s not just gas and electric being a total rip off. Last week I had to drive last then 40 miles. I needed some diesel, so popped into Morrisons. I was amazed to found that the price of diesel was 12 pence more a litter then my local Morrisons. I pointed this out to another driver filling up who stated that it was the cheapest fuel in the area. Needless to say I only put in enough to get back. All the big companies are ripping us off. The government is allowing it because they want to push the green nonsense on us.

Of course it's fleecing customers, especially so in the case of business users who don't have any cap to prices charged. Centrica most likely work on a 2% profit most of the time and rely on huge turnover to make profit.
Shell claim to be supplying renewable source electricity so why have their prices increased by such a large amount ? some increase is inevitable to cover additional maintenance costs but the wind is free so no additional cost there, the billions of profit they have just announced are nothing but profiteering at the expense of their customers.

I totally agree with DaveW comments above.

Emgee

In respect of Shell Energy, I am a customer of theirs for gas and electricity, their propaganda proudly displays that the electricity they supply to their customers is all 100% renewable, if that’s the case, as Emgee has stated, why has the price been jacked up alongside other suppliers who are sourcing their energy from non-sustainable sources, wind and solar are cost free except for the necessary infrastructure that’s used for collecting and distribution, their distribution costs have not suddenly gone through the roof. Dave W

In my simple mind none of the energy today costs much to produce than a year ago but they will charge what they can get away with.

Tony

The energy market is complex and there are no simple solutions.

The profits being taken, although obscene, are a drop in the ocean; divide them by the number of people in the UK and it's a few pounds per head - your energy bill is mostly paying for energy.

Energy is sold on an open market. The way the price is determined is complex but at the end of the day a wind farm sells its energy for what it can get, and if the price of energy is high they earn lots of money. Your 100% renewable supplier buys that wind farm energy on the open market and resells it to you.

The modern grid is actually far more resilient than it used to be - last week's heatwave would have knocked the grid over in previous years, as we lost essentially anything that requires air cooling. But the total capacity desperately needs increasing, and transmission needs bulked up: often wind energy generated in Scotland can't get where it needs to be because there is no transmission capacity to get it to the south of England, so wind turbines stand idle.

My total utility bill has hovered around an average of about $180/month for as long as I can remember.

The last two months, my utility bills were $500 and $600.

My local utility company has gotten into the add-on game, where they keep coming up with new things to add to the bill, such as a rodent-control fee, a storm water fee, a solid waste fee, sewer fee, and street light fee.

These fees are in addition to the gas, electric and water fees.

The sewer fee I think is based on water usage, and so if you water your lawn, you still pay the sewer fee.

I am starting to think about a large rainwater storage tank, and installing separate potable and non-potable water systems, but unfortunately the bulk of the fees are electric and gas.

At the rate that the fees are increasing, I will end up having to section off part of my house, and only heat/cool about 1/3 of it.

Inflation is out of control for sure.

For the record, I voted for those who had the US as an energy independent nation, because that is just common sense. Now we are begging 3rd world countries for energy, which makes us I guess a 4th world country?

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